Avalon Revisited (25 page)

The short man flailed for a moment before going limp, and the taller man, over the initial shock, had rushed over to help, but then thought better of it. He turned, and although surprised at seeing me, it didn’t halt. He ran right past me up the stairs.

I tried to shake off the prevailing hunger and focus, as Lord Wallace had just thrown the short man off of him and was rising. He came at me. Instinctively I put my right hand out, holding him back, just as I had held open his front door only minutes ago, but he was no weak, elderly, human butler. His strength rivaled my own, nothing like the old and feeble man he had been in life. In fact, his strength was beginning to surpass mine. The fresh blood he had just consumed was making him stronger by the second. He was growling and grabbing at me, but I couldn’t grab either the vampire slayer gun or the crossbow without letting him go. I compromised, reaching across the front of my body to take one of the spare wooden bullets out of its leather loop. With as much force as I could muster, I jammed it into his heart. It was enough to distract him for a moment, but it didn’t paralyze him. It wasn’t deep enough. I stuck my thumb on the back edge of the bullet and thrust it deeper, feeling the wetness of his insides.

He froze.

I removed my hand, and he fell to the floor with a thud. I reached around back for the hatchet, but the blood called to me once again. The short man was dead, but all his blood was not yet spilled. And I was really, really thirsty.

If there are more of these creatures, I will need my strength,
I reasoned.
Plus, Avalon is back
in my life, so there was no need to deny myself human blood anymore.
I pushed any thought of Avalon’s disapproval out of my mind, justifying it with the fact that I didn’t kill this man. And I couldn’t deny my own nature forever. I would need my strength to protect Avalon, so it was really for her safety. And before I came up with another reason, I found myself already drinking from the wound.

The blood washed down my throat in bliss. It was as if I had been living in a desert for a hundred years and this was my first taste of water. I drank and drank until the man was dry.

Then, taking the axe, chopped off his head, to ensure he wouldn’t be drinking from someone else tomorrow night.

I turned to finish the job on Lord Wallace, but something caught my eye from the stairs. It was Avalon. And she looked horrified. Guiltily wiping the blood from my mouth, I couldn’t deny that she had seen it all.

She knew what I was.

I felt her love for me retreat, leaving a gaping hole in my chest, and I ached for her.

She turned and ran back up the stairs.

Dropping the hatchet, I followed. “Avalon,” I shouted. “Avalon!” When I reached the top of the stairs, Avalon was in the arms of another man, against her will. He appeared to be nearing fifty, and his age showed in the streaks of grey in his beard and sideburns. He was dressed very well, obviously well-to-do. His arms encircled her, holding her close to him with his black cane held up as a barrier. She was struggling and he was laughing.

“Arthur,” she cried once. I felt a strange prick on the back of my neck and blackness filled my senses. Then, there was nothing.

I awoke in darkness, but my eyes quickly adjusted. Taking quick assessment of my situation and surroundings, I found that I was in some kind of stone cell. The mortar outlining the stones appeared a little brighter in the darkness. There was a single source of light, dimly leaking through a window in a heavy door. That was all I could take in for the moment. My head hurt as if it was clamped in a vice, but someone else was here with me. Then the sweetness of her filled my nostrils and overpowered the dampness and stench of rat droppings. There, cowering in the corner, was Avalon. She was crying. I tried to process all this information along with what I remembered.

She knew. She saw.

Then pain. Emptiness. Darkness.

“Avalon?” I said softly.

“You stay away from me!” she cried, hugging the wall.

She was terrified. Of me. But then why wouldn’t she be? I had lied to her all this time, but now she knew what I truly was. I felt her horror, as sure as the hard stones against my back. I felt her horror. It was Catherine all over again.

“I won’t hurt you, my love,” I said gently, but how could I make her understand that after what she saw me do? “I could never hurt you.” Regardless of how she felt about me, we were both trapped in this cell. Perhaps I can get her mind off what I am by engaging her help to solve the mystery of how we got here, and where exactly ‘here’ was. “Do you know where we are sweetheart?”

“Don’t call me that! You–you–
monster
!”

I had been called much worse in my time, but it never cut as deep as hearing the fear and renewed betrayal in her voice. And all for a few drops of blood.

“You’re like them” she said. “You killed Victor!”

“I’m not like them, Ava. I’m different, and you know I didn’t kill Victor. You saw what happened with your own eyes. I tried to save him that night. I was fighting on your side. True, I am a vampire, but that’s not what they are. They are something unnatural. Something created by man.”

“Unnatural!” she almost laughed. I’m sure the subtle difference between what was supernatural and unnatural was lost on her at this moment. Still, I pressed on. I stayed on my side of the cell, so as not to distress her any more than she already was.

“Darling, I am scared, too. But we must understand the situation fully. It’s our only chance to survive this and get out of here. Do you understand?”

I saw her nod and then wipe away her tears. She sat up straight against the far wall, flattening herself against it, as if to keep as much distance between us as possible.

“Do you believe that I won’t hurt you?”

Hesitantly, she answered, “Yes.” She must’ve been going over and over the events of the last months in her mind, believing that I had many opportunities to hurt her if I chose. Even her aunt, with whom she now knew I had been intimate, was unscathed. That was the first step: ensuring she wasn’t afraid of me. We had to work together to get out of this mess.

“Good. What do you remember? Tell me everything from when we parted at my place until I saw you in the cemetery. Why were you there?”

“I followed him. Lacy,” she said, but she couldn’t look at me. At least she was talking, that was a good start. “The apothecary was closing shortly after I arrived, but there was someone already there. I waited my turn, planning to inquire about Dr. Lacy, but then the clerk addressed the man there as ‘Dr. Lacy.’ It couldn’t have been a coincidence!” She looked up at me in her excitement, but didn’t hold my gaze. Rather, she dropped her eyes back down to the stone floor and continued, “He had ordered a pound each of yew needles and gilead buds, which I thought to be quite excessive, and then turned to leave. He tipped his hat to me as he left. I went to the counter, so as not to raise suspicion, but I knew I couldn’t waste too much time or I’d lose him. I told the clerk that I must’ve forgotten my purse, gave my apologies, and quickly left. Fortunately, Dr. Lacy was still in the street, just getting into a hansom. I took the next one and ordered the driver to follow Lacy’s cab at a gentle distance. From the window of my cab, I saw Lacy get out of his cab at the cemetery and then proceed inside. I paid the driver, who pulled up within a minute after dropping Lacy off, and then went in after him. I lost him among the tombstones and vaults, but then I came across the Wallace family chamber. I decided to go down quietly to see if he was there, hoping you had been led there as well. But then I saw you–”

She stopped short and gasped. She was crying again.

My dead heart was breaking. I so wanted to comfort her.

“You monster,” she whispered.

I so wanted to assure her I wasn’t a monster, but we’d both know that was a lie. I tried to take her mind off my state of being and back onto the matter at hand. Surviving.

“After that, Ava. You ran upstairs and...” I urged her on.

She wiped her tears on her sleeve and after composing herself, she continued, “He was there waiting for me. Then I saw Cecil with a syringe.”

“Cecil?” Certainly she meant another Cecil.

“Yes, Cecil. Your butler!”

I tried to process this information, but it just didn’t make sense. Cecil? Why would Cecil be in the cemetery? Had he followed me?

“I thought he was there with you,” she continued, “but I couldn’t figure out why he had a syringe. I mean, I suppose all this went through my head. It happened so fast. Before I knew it, Lacy had me restrained and Cecil injected you with something.”

“Cecil did this to me? After all the years of service...” My voice faded off. Betrayal wasn’t new to me, of course, but each new betrayal stung like it was the first.

I would’ve been a foolish king.

“You collapsed. They blindfolded me, and then we were here. That’s all I remember.”

“Cecil,” I said again. “I can’t believe it.” My mind was reeling for clues over the past few months, angry with myself for not seeing it myself. He had been more insolent as of late, but...

Then I remembered the night he was gone. Love, he said, and like a schoolboy in love myself, I believed him.

“Arthur!” she scolded, snapping me out of my self-recrimination. “What are we to do? We’re trapped in here!”

She was right. Time for self-loathing later. I tried to stand, but I faltered. The room swam before me, becoming blurry then clear again. Back to blurry. I fell back against the stone floor.

Hard. They had drugged me with something strong, it seemed, and the effects hadn't completely worn off. Perhaps it was the same substance Victor had spoken of. The tranquilizers they had used on that vampire they tortured with the sunrise. Perhaps that would be my fate, too.

Avalon instinctively made a move toward me, but then thought better of it. Still not sure of me.

“Our weapons?” I asked, standing up again, more slowly this time. My head was spinning, and I caught myself against the wall.

“They have them all.” She sat now with her back against the wall, hugging her knees. All her fear of me seemed to have subsided for the most part. Perhaps seeing me in a weakened state coupled with the sting of Cecil’s betrayal ignited some empathy towards me, for now we were both solely concerned with getting out of this cell.

I felt my way along the cold stone wall, colder than even my skin if I could feel its chill, until I reached a wooden door. I should be able to kick this down if I could get some strength back. I needed more blood, but I wouldn’t feed from Avalon, not even if it was the only way to save both our lives. I wouldn’t do that to her. I wouldn’t make her fear me. There had to be another way. I looked out the tiny window near the top of the door, and through it I saw a laboratory unlike anything I could’ve ever imagined.

Torches lined the walls spaced about five feet apart, and a large wrought iron chandelier supporting dozens of candles hung from the ceiling. The wax had built up around each black arm, creating ivory mounds of hardened trickles topped with a single point of light. The candles and torches together gave off enough light to brighten the place considerably, although darkness waited along the edges, begging to crawl back in.

The rest was similar to the black magic dens of my original time, but instead of bubbling cauldrons brewing up potions and foulness and herbs drying from the ceiling, this was mechanical and hard. Yet the overall feeling was the same. Three large glass vessels, big enough to hold a full grown man, were at the far end of the laboratory. They were filled with some sort of gelatinous liquid and wires were coming out of the top of each. The liquid moved, as if it was being circulated through a pump. To the right of the vessels were huge gears, similar to those I saw on the dirigible, and they were turning steadily, perhaps circulating the fluid. The front of each glass vessel had a control panel with knobs, dials, and gauges. Two of the three had occupants suspended in the viscous solution. One was a werewolf, trapped in its shifted state; the other appeared to be a human corpse, judging from the decay. I continued to watch, whether out of horror or curiosity I couldn't say, then one of them moved!

“Dear God, they’re alive,” I said out loud.
Or at least animated.
Now it was I who was horrified. Were they conscious in there? What was this treacherous man doing?

My eyes scanned the rest of the laboratory. Some sort of steam escaped from a vertical pipe causing a thin piece of hinged metal to bob open and closed at the top of the pipe. An iron platform hung suspended overhead by chains, to the side of the chandelier. In the center were two large tables. On one lay Lord Wallace, still paralyzed. On the other lay our weapons along with other mechanical contraptions. Dr. Lacy was examining our weapons closely and then writing in a leather bound book.

Then I saw Cecil, and my blood boiled. He carried in a tray of tea and sat it beside the doctor.

A growl emerged from deep within, and I wanted to kill and drink and exact revenge in the most painful way possible. I heard a whimper from behind me. I turned back to Avalon, who was crying. My eyes had adjusted enough and my strength was returning. I noticed that she had been misused. How had I not seen it before? Her clothes were torn and dirt smeared her face. I went to her, and she cowered, trying to shrink into the wall. But I would not let her push me away, not if they had violated her.

“I will not hurt you, my love,” I repeated. “Did they?”

“They were rough, but I was not ruined,” she said, lifting up her torn blouse over her shoulder.

“Where is your cloak?”

“They took it, along with yours, I think.”

I spun around, scanning the interior of the cell. Sure enough, mine was gone, too.

“Are you cold?” I asked Avalon, trying to take care of her the best I could under the circumstances.

“I’m fine,” she said. Her hands were in a defensive position between us, so I backed off and sat a few feet away from her. Between our grim situation and Avalon’s coldness, despair destroyed what little strength had returned.